7 Reasons NJPW Should Be Worried About 2017

6. Uninspiring Young Lions

Henare NJPW
twitter.com/mrlariato

NJPW has been blessed with a couple of incredible collections of young lions over the last few years. Sho Tanaka and Yohei Komatsu started the trend, putting on some of the best young lion matches in history before being shipped off to Mexico for their excursions. Bet on them to return and dominate the junior tag scene in a year or so.

They were followed by Jay White and David Finlay, and if the former isn’t a major pro wrestling star by 2025 then I know nothing about wrestling. Finlay is yet to depart, but his aesthetic development and status as one third of the NEVER Openweight six-man tag champions suggests he may be sticking around a little longer.

The current crop, whilst certainly not useless, don’t inspire the same amount of excitement as Tanaka, Komatsu, White and Finlay did. Henare has proved himself enthusiastic and energetic, but that will only take you so far. Outside of Henare there isn’t a lot to shout about, and 2016 saw a number of NJPW talents (mainly Shibata) speak up about the lack of quality in the new crop of young lions.

Some viewers may tire of the relentless repetition of young lion opening matches, but these anonymous black-trunked rookies are an underrated and vital part of the NJPW set-up. For the first time in a few years, NJPW has a lot of work to do with the young lions.

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.